[Plugin] [Part] [0.17] KIS Connect V7a [2Oct12] [MIT]

[kellven]

"Because a stack of fuel should never behave like a stack of pancakes, unless your orbiting IHOP"

-Emperor Kellven the Hungered

Pre-Breakfast R&D Conference

KIS HQ, Oct 2012

Seems the explody ship thing is gone now in 0.17, so I rewrote this thing ignoring the half baked partmodule system, and it works as well as it's going to atm.

For KSP 0.17 (MechJeb or No MechJeb)

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/74137297/KISConnectV7a.zip

General Description:

This is a Part Connection DeWobblification System(PCDWS). It replaces the joints that hold the parts of your ship together with ones that wobble less.

You will find a tiny black box in the C&C section of the VAB. Attaching one to your ship will make it less wobbly. Failing to attach one to your ship will make this do absolutely nothing. Attaching more than one may cause "Explody Rocket Syndrome"/crash your game/etc. Part should automagically do it's thing, but if you wish, manual activation is available through the RClicky menu. Almost all joint parameters and plugin behavior are available in the part.cfg, or can be modified by another plugin should someone write one. Does not make rockets perfectly rigid, nor make part connections any less breakable. Uber Strut included for Stupid Kerbal Tricks like this 1kiloton orbital fuel dump.

Known Side Effects:

-May or may not induce "Launchpad Ballet", or similar irresistable ugres to Jump, Jive, and Explode when applied to rockets.

-May or may not induce spontaneously sublimation in struts and surface mounted thingies.

-May cause "Keyboard Face", or "Head through Monitor Syndrome" after prolonged tinkering with joint parameters.

Use only as directed, and prescribed by a Doctor.

For External Use Only.

If ingested, seek medical attention immediately.

Known issues and causes:

-Ground contact is still extremely problematic, at least for single point-of contact. This is just the way KSP handles gravity and ground contact, nothing much I can do about it. Legs/Multiple points of contact seem to resolve this mostly, as will the launch clamps. To help combat this, joint projection settings were added with a tiny value, which seems to cause the second problem.

-Surface mounted parts use still another type of joint, and weirdness resulted from replacing these joints in addition to stack. They needed to be replaced to prevent wing separation with the joint projection settings in place to stop the ballet.

-If you don't mind the ground contact issues, you can change the projection settings back to 0.0, 0.0, and None, and set kFixSrfJoints = false in the part.cfg.

-The joint axes are probably setup incorrectly under the Rotating Part Regime of KSP 0.15.

Unity references for "HALP!":

http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/Components/class-ConfigurableJoint.html

http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/ScriptReference/ConfigurableJoint.html

Old Version for KSP 0.14-(0.15 broke my plugins)

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/74137297/KISConnectV2a.zip

If someone with a rudimentary comprehension of basic physics, or fundamental spatial reasoning abilities wants to take this project over, feel free.

Licensed under MIT. If anyone has a licensing issue, please contact me, if contact cannot be made, consider it in principle copyfree.

Edited October 2, 2012 by kellven

[kellven]

This is very ugly and rough, even for me, but it works as described for me. I would normally clean it up at least a little, but I\'m quite sick of coding at the moment, so I\'ll get around to that later.

While this seems to work with some of my ship designs, I really need input on how it works for other people; so if you try it out, please tell me if/how well it works for you. I\'m all about functionality, so I\'ll probably fix it as soon as I read about it.

[kellven]

Updated to clean and friendly version. Now activates all by itself when it thinks the joints might need fixing, fully automated.

[Lazurkri]

So, essentially, this strengthens the connections between parts, so long as they\'re not stupidly mismatched parts (Like the example you mentioned)?

I\'ll download this and try it out, I have a Airship model that keeps shredding itself despite much usage of struts and trusses...

[kellven]

Sorry I couldn\'t get this version out earlier, Lazurkri. I read your post, but the code to affect the stack joints took a long time to test/bugfix. V2 may not have helped you much, but V2a should help a lot, or so I hope.

[kellven]

Finally put a pic up to show off my stupid rocket tricks awesome world-shattering modding skills. Here\'s a couple more:

Actually, I still had massive issues getting these things to stand up on the launchpad, but that\'s an issue with NS\'s parts\' connection settings. My old workaround to wobble was setting breakingforce/breakingtorque to 1k, using mountains of struts set to 40k, and hoping for the best as it lagged the VAB past slideshow.

With the joint issues sorted, realistic cfg settings can be used without the connections going nuts, meaning you can have the structural integrity values actually mean something besides how badly the ship slides and wobbles.

I have no idea what was changed internally in .15, so this may become redundant, but if the old joints are still in use, I will add fields to the cfg for the spring settings, and a bool switch to use locked or limited joints. Once that\'s done(if it is), every relevant value the joints use will be settable in the cfg, and the plugin will just be applying your settings uniformly across the craft.

[Guest]

I think this should be how joints work by default. This plugin is amazing, I\'m using it in all my designs more complex than Titan GLV. It prevents wobble, but doesn\'t stop a badly made stage (read: not strutted enough) from obliterating itself upon takeoff.

[Tim_Barrett]

Oh my god... just what I needed!

[kellven]

Your input is requested. Pretty please? I\'ll give you some LOX?

[Dolkramp]

It seems that a number of other plug-ins were rendered inoperable by .15, but this seems ok. I\'ve only had time to go through 2 launches. Both were pretty big stacks using NP fairings/shrouds, and the performance didn\'t seem any different than .14.

[kellven]

When you said 'performance didn\'t seem any different than .14', did you mean the plugin didn\'t seem any different, or that the default joints are still slidy/wobbly? I\'m getting terrible lag on entering the flightscene right now, but I didn\'t notice any problems with the vanilla joints yet, so I\'m really not sure if they were changed.

[Dolkramp]

When you said 'performance didn\'t seem any different than .14', did you mean the plugin didn\'t seem any different, or that the default joints are still slidy/wobbly? I\'m getting terrible lag on entering the flightscene right now, but I didn\'t notice any problems with the vanilla joints yet, so I\'m really not sure if they were changed.

So far the results I\'ve had with Connect V2a are identical, regardless of which KSP version I\'m running. The only issue I\'ve had is the KW Challenger pack 2m and 3m engines are incredibly unstable (jitterbug/bouncing) even with a moderately heavy rocket (other mods 2m and 3m engines work without issues). In fairness, this is an issue with or without KIS Connect (any version) and regardless of the KSP version. The problem must not be with the joint.

I\'m not sure about stock parts...this mod opens up so many designs with mod parts that weren\'t useable before, I haven\'t done much stock. I\'ll mess around with some stock parts (I still have a .14 install) and see if I notice any difference in performance between the KSP versioins

[kellven]

Thanks, still snarled in a MuMech Engine update that won\'t load, but this plugin is so simple I doubt it will actually need updating. If you don\'t actually attach a black box to your ship, none of the code here runs, so finding out if the stuff still wobbles is just a matter of removing the box temporarily. Unfortunately, I\'m one of the people getting unplayable gfx lag whenever Kerbin surface is on screen, so testing where the wobble is usually most noticeable is not really possible for me yet.

[Guest]

There\'s a couple of sliders that control terrain detail levels. You might want to check those out.

[Zhent]

I\'m running into an interesting bug with this plugin. When I launch my rocket it imparts an immediate 90* rotation that is not present without the little black box. I\'m not sure what to make of it - everything else is the same between the two setups, except one starts with that rotation and the other does not. The rotation is always almost exactly 90*, and it is always clockwise, regardless of where I put the model on my rocket.

I\'m not sure what else to troubleshoot - I\'ve got a couple of mods, MuMech / Down Under Parts / Challenger LEM/PLF/etc.

[kellven]

Ok, I\'ll look through the code again, I had not really updated it for .15 yet, so it might be something to do with the new runway launch, or it might be something in the new model scheme that I need to take into account. Is this 90\' rotation on the parts, or the ship as a whole, and is it when doing a runway launch or pad launch. I actually haven\'t even used this yet in my own .15 game, so I\'ll have to try it out myself.

[Zhent]

It\'s on the entire ship, and doesn\'t occur till after takeoff, but it happens within the first, oh, like 50M of vertical movement. Then the Mechjeb takes over and can rotate the ship back onto the \'normal\' axes.

I will try with entirely stock parts later this evening, just to make sure it\'s not some weird compatibility issue within some of these plugins.

[sss]

Well, now, somebody who till has 14x!

Approves.

[kellven]

I was unable to reproduce it, but I will try actually launch/takeoff. I also found out the latest DA 'wormplane' hinge thingies aren\'t being properly excluded from the joint replacement, so I will have to fix that too.

Actually, I left all of my .14 stuff up. With .15 still so buggy after two weeks of testing, it really makes me wonder exactly what the testers were doing, and what the initial version looked like.

Edit: I looked through the code again, and noticed something that may possibly not be set quite right in light of the rotatable parts. The plugin loader algorithm in KSP changed in .15, and there\'s at least one bug in it related to references, this was referencing the .14 mechjeb plugin, so I relinked that to 1.8.2 version also.

I still couldn\'t get anything like you were describing, but I\'ll try the new batch and see if that fixes my problems with the tiltrotors. Assuming the problem was actually in MechJeb (which is extremely buggy atm), relinking may fix your problem as well.

If you could hit F1 when your ship turns, and post a screenshot, it would be extremely helpful. I would think that if this was causing a problem, it would be rotating the parts individually, nothing should be affecting the ship itself, unless the dynamics of having wobbly joints somehow made the thing more stable when the abrupt gravity turn starts at 10km. MechJeb is know to cause spiral mode troubles when it\'s jerking the controls about during that phase.

[kellven]

The logic tree got too big, and I had to separate it out into another two functions. It did seem to process the joints correctly though. It might not actually fix anything until the first stage gets activated, seems to be another feature of .15.

As I was updating the main post, I realized MechJeb is now at 1.8.3, so I\'m going to have to check that out too now, and hope I don\'t have to recompile it again. The plugin loader changed, and it\'s rather buggy atm, so no guarantees.

[kellven]

Recompiled against MechJeb 1.8.3, going to leave up old versions at least until the 0.15 mess stabilizes, don\'t want to force anyone to update things unnecessarily.

[noneyabidnis]

Note - I tried this plug-in out for the first time last night. I have 15.

Launched a big rocket, it was wobbly, but made it up into orbit.

Add the little black box, and launched, and my rocket leaned straight north. Note that while on launch pad, I usually press 't' right away and then launch. With the little black box, my ship noses over towards the north. Without the box, it goes straight up.

Weird.

[kellven]

It was a royal pain to get this to work in 0.15, but the joints were not fixed in the update either. Unfortunately, I\'m completely unable to reproduce the turning problem.

I\'m going to have to think about it for a while. There should be absolutely nothing in here that could affect course, it\'s just modifying/replacing the joints, and I get all the values used from the pre-existing joints themselves.

The only thing I can think of that could possibly be wrong is that something has a very unusual joint setup that\'s not on my exclusion list yet.

[noneyabidnis]

I\'m happy to send you my ship and make a video if you\'d like. The ship is using a bunch of NP parts, though - maybe I can replicate with stock parts. If not, I\'ll send you the parts I\'m using as well.

I thought maybe the black box was causing a drag issue, so I moved it to a different part of ship. Same behavior.

Sorry for the bad news - I know it must be frustrating.

[kellven]

Anything would be helpfull really, even just a screenshot. I\'m not even sure where the NP parts are anymore, but I\'ll take a look when I get a second.

I\'m working out some kinks in the new code architecture regime that\'s supposed to come in with 0.16, once I get a couple problems worked out, I think I can do a much cleaner port to 0.15. I really would like to get this problem you\'re having fixed, there\'s just so many other changes that happened internally with 0.15, that it\'s not obvious where the issue lies.